


Spring — 2007

by trash_bat



Series: Years and Years [3]
Category: British Actor RPF, British Comedy RPF, Nathan Barley (TV) RPF
Genre: Delirium, Dominance, Face Slapping, Feelings, Insomnia, M/M, Masturbation, Paranoia, Riding, Sex Tape, Sleep Deprivation, Television, Texting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-07-24 22:23:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20021989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trash_bat/pseuds/trash_bat
Summary: As filming wraps onScreenwipe,a sleep-deprived Charlie reaches out.





	Spring — 2007

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wreathed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreathed/gifts).



> [Coffee and TV — Blur](https://youtu.be/6oqXVx3sBOk)  
> [Reflector — Arcade Fire](https://youtu.be/7E0fVfectDo)  
> [Now It’s On — Grandaddy](https://youtu.be/aIRsG0HLH7E)  
> [Hang On to Your Ego — Frank Black](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ2qi9KfEZ8)  
> [Lovelife — Lush](https://youtu.be/L6dNwNP6h0I)  
> [BBC Canteen coffee ](https://flic.kr/p/bsmRCh)/ [Day-old baked goods ](https://images.app.goo.gl/jXuJJjaGB4Ufp9bd8)  
> 

Making television is, Charlie realizes now that he's stuck in, fucking _relentless_. If he’d known how grueling the schedule would be he probably wouldn’t have been so keen. Writing it was one thing; hell, you could write in your pants at any time of the night, but now? Now he’s got to go in to the studio, seven days a week while they’re in full swing. Until all hours he’s there, in the edit suite, going through the segments in thirty-second intervals and by the time he’s finished with that there’s still direct-to-camera shit to record back at the flat. 

His rationale there is that in springing for a cab home he’s reclaiming at least half an hour of time in which to work. Yes, _okay_ , he knows he should wait for the night bus but it’s cold and the shelter smells of wee and if he stands there long enough it only makes sense to smoke. Have to do something with your hands while you wait. 

The better money he’s supposedly making is going straight into the deep pockets of Big Taxi and he’s living on takeaways and overpriced caffeinated froth which means he’s about to have his gas shut off because he keeps on making stupid decisions. 

These include things like agreeing to 'after-work drinks' which ends really up being him and Annabel demolishing some own-brand G&Ts at her desk at a quarter past midnight, when she tells him the production schedule for autumn's being pushed up by six weeks and, oh by the way, the network was wondering how he felt about a Christmas episode? 

_Fine_ he says, and takes a swig to cover his fluster. _Really good._ Good to have an extra hour to fill, right? Good to be working, isn't it? 

Now he _really_ can’t afford to waste time taking the bus. 

Daybreak comes and he’s only just passed out on his couch. Some mornings he makes it into the bed for another couple hours, hauls his creaky joints into the shower and only lights the first cigarette of the day once he’s got a proper coffee clutched in his hand. He stands still on the pavement while he smokes it. After all, there’s no pleasure in smoking while you walk. Nearly as bad as the bus shelter. 

The less he permits himself to smoke then the more he likes these little rules he sets up to police them. It makes the pleasure more acute, to have it less often, and it's nice, too, to focus on it so completely. It makes his head swim, that first jolt of nicotine. Of all the things he's going to have to give up, someday, probably pretty soon, it's that first hit that he'll miss the most. 

~~~

Charlie works and works but it doesn't matter in the end. They're weeks out from finishing and over budget to boot. He's pacing so relentlessly that Annabel tells him to fuck off home before she finally gives in and lets Al strangle him like he's been threatening to since yesterday. 

It's pretty early, like, not even night bus early, yet he still manages to nod off in his seat and miss his stop. He wakes with a start, face smushed up against the glass, fogged with his slack-jawed breath, and he rubs his gritty eyes and signals for the next one. In the end he just walks back to the flat and ends up pantsless, on his sofa, smoking and staring at the ceiling. 

At some point he passes out. When he wakes up the TV is playing a shitty psychic call-in show, his bladder is pushing against his kidneys, and there’s a putrid taste in his mouth. His stomach rumbles. 

Later it's back to work, back to banging out gags with David, back to arguing about clearance with the researchers, back to recording pick-ups, back to another night so late it turns into day, crammed into the edit suite with Al and about two dozen empty takeaway containers. 

_This is disgusting_ he says, picking up a styrofoam box that, he thinks, once held chips. There’s curry sauce dried in the corners. He sniffs it, tentatively, then pitches it into the wastebasket, in a halfhearted effort to make the room slightly more habitable. 

_It’s archaeology, Charlie._ Al tosses yet another styrofoam container onto the table behind them. He leans over to the video edit and jabs a finger at the screen. _Back it up a coupla seconds_ he tells the line editor. They watch the clip again and Al says, cheerfully over his shoulder, _you look like a dickhead, mate._

 _Thanks_ Charlie replies, folding his arms in front of his chest, _good to know I’m consistent._

He'd already known he looked a twat. In fact he'd already watched the footage, gone so far as to edit it down roughly before passing it along to the team, because at some point while he was ranting about Ann Widdicombe he'd seen something even more frightening than her attempt at a 'sincerely concerned face': a spider, sauntering across his floor away from the kitchen as if it had just been attending a dinner party and now was popping off to the loo. 

The joke he'd thought up much later. At the time Charlie had merely shrieked, shrilly, like a woman, after which he'd sprung up onto the couch, as if by keeping his own feet off the ground it wouldn't be able to get to him and there he'd sat, arms clasped round his knees, until he was certain it'd gone. 

That night he went so far as to avoid the bathroom entirely. The sink would do. And he slept on the sofa. Well, _slept_ was a slight exaggeration. How could he, knowing it was there? In his flat? Why, at any moment he expected it to emerge, waving its pointy legs about like a knight at a jousting tournament. 

He briefly entertained the notion that Liz might come round and dispatch it for him. She was handy like that. Hell, she might even feel sorry enough for him to give him a handjob, even though they'd been split up for ages. He hadn't questioned it, when she'd offered in the past. A pity wank was still a wank, even if it did make him feel more hollow than ever afterwards. 

A few days on he’s particularly jumpy, although the spider has yet to make a second appearance. He knows it's in the flat, lurking. Charlie hopes beyond hope that it's been eaten by a snake, though that raises the issue that his flat might be infested with snakes, which is a whole other terrifying kettle of... _snakes_. 

Charlie had just about reconciled himself to the possibility that the spider had taken up residence in a cupboard somewhere when he began to worry anew. That it was merely biding its time. Gathering reinforcements. Calling up its friends: other spiders, _bigger_ spiders, having a little soirée in his bathroom. Plotting how best to murder him and take over his lease. When Al or Grace would come looking for him, however many days on, there would only be a papery carapace from where they'd have sucked out all his insides and left him there for dead. 

~~~

Sometimes during those late nights, alone in his flat and talking to a phantom viewer, Charlie gets out his phone and scrolls through his contacts down to the letter _C_. He never saves last names; they take up extra memory, but he'd had cause to regret it when one late (for which read: bored, horny, agitated, restless, and did he mention horny?) night he'd sent a text to a _Chris_ who'd turned out to be a _Christina_ , someone he'd met at a drinks thing back when he'd been newly single and fucking stupid after three vodkas. She'd responded right away _hey Charlie good to hear from you_ and he'd panicked, dropped the phone like it was covered in fire ants and willed it not to buzz again. 

They don't text. They don't talk on the phone, either. Chris sends him postcards, time to time, from one of his far-flung European holidays; Rome at night, a sun-scorched panorama of the Tuscan countryside: shit like that. He stuffs them into a kitchen drawer with all the forgotten takeaway menus, curled up around the edges from the humidity from the kettle, the water he boils for pasta.

On occasion they'll run into one another, the way professional people do, but he's always with someone. Another man — Charlie tries to remember if he's ever seen him out with a woman, and a single instance fails to materialize — sometimes a youngish one, usually a bloke he himself knows in a roundabout way.

Emails result from these encounters. Chris instigates and Charlie waits an appropriate amount of time to respond, but they soon dissipate into a cloud of convivial promises to get coffee, to bat around ideas for a second _Barley_ series, go for a pint when they're both free. None of it ever comes to pass. 

Chris had, once, been like air to him. Rarefied air, that he got to breathe but once a year; twice, tops, but _fuck_. Heady stuff. Pure oxygen sucked down from a mask. The drugs they gave you at the dentist. It made the world sit right for a few precious minutes when Chris was around. But, well. Well, then Liz had come along and honestly? Keeping his smoking habit secret was miserable enough. He couldn’t justify _that_ , too. 

Six years ago, or thereabouts, on the nights when the drugs hadn’t been too strong and he’d been hard enough to have a go, he'd sprawl pantsless on his sofa and revisit certain memories. The particular heft of Chris's hand on his shoulder as they turned a corner, the way he always looked Charlie in the eye for just a _fraction_ longer than comfort required. How he was always _there_ , somehow, turning up unexpectedly. The way he spoiled Charlie, buying him little presents: the largest latte in a fuck-off huge porcelain cup, nice headphones, an extra memory card, a brand new DVD. All well beyond his skint budget at the time. 

Charlie can purchase his own electronics now, thank you, and he can expense the box sets to the paper. He's even managed to make them pay for his satellite installation and a few skin flicks to boot. He doesn't need Chris to buy him stuff, the way he's no doubt doing with them. The other ones. Taking _them_ out to lunch. Asking _them_ questions. Lighting _their_ cigarettes. Listening to _their_ ideas. Going for endless fucking walks. Sitting on the roof. And all the other stuff that went with it.

As for Charlie? Well, yesterday Charlie had found a white hair in his eyebrow, sticking out horizontally from amongst the brown ones, a wiry reminder that he's certainly not getting any younger. No wonder Chris has other plans. 

There had been times, have been times, when Charlie had thought to reach out. He'd steeled himself to make the first overture. To email first, without bumping into Chris at a café, a bookshop. He'd picked up the phone and scrolled down the list of contacts and then thought better of it. What would happen if he casually invited Chris round to his? Would he laugh down the line? Refuse him outright? The possibility was too dreadful to contemplate, and as a result he'd managed to convince himself that there were enough people in his life — work people, okay, but _people_ who would still think to stop him if he’d been about to do a fucking murder — and he’d thought, well, this time I can make it through. Without him. Without _that._

Charlie sighs. He drops the phone onto the coffee table with a clatter, rubs his palms against his scratchy eyes until they water before turning to glare down the lens of the camera and growl something blistering that he doesn't even really care all that much about. 

  
~~~

They're achingly close to being finished, and Charlie is completely fucking ready to be done. Only a few segments remain and then he'll have his first proper weekend off in ages. Not that he's got anything lined up. No, his plans entail nothing more than drinking a large whiskey (which he doesn’t even really care for), changing his disgusting sheets, bumming a few Valium off Aisleyne and passing out for two days running — never mind that Charlie’s never managed to sleep more than five hours in one go since he was in short pants. 

It's so close he can taste it in his swollen throat. 

On the last night he's re-recording all the outtakes, shit where the sound was too bad to fix in the edit, additional gags they'd added to pad the running time, pushing himself to finish tonight because he cannot fucking take a single day more. It's the bleak gray early dawn and he's nodding off sat upright on his couch, despite the bright lights shining right at him. When he wakes with a start, eyes coming to focus on the monitor, really his TV looping himself back at him, he swears that a blurry figure runs straight across the screen. 

Charlie jolts to attention, hot ice in his veins. Now he's awake. Terrified, yes, but awake. 

It doesn't make sense. There's no space behind the couch. There's no way, is there, that someone could be there? In his flat?

He checks the locks and all the windows, just to be double, triple, quadruple sure about it before returning to the sofa and skipping ahead in his contacts to the letter _S,_ the right letter. 

_hey_

_you up?_

The reply is nearly instantaneous. 

**Sure am.**

He’s squinting down at the phone trying to keep his composure. Chris will know what to do, how to handle it. All he has to do is tell him. 

**How are you Charlie?**

_me?_

_okay_

_except_

_think im going mad_

**_Are you?_ **

_dont know_

_how would i know?_

The spiders, he supposes. The phantom figure living in his television screen. The delirium to the point that he's sleepwalking through the day and can't begin to fathom how he makes it home most nights. The constant churning in his stomach. The afternoons when he has to go and retch into the toilets, bringing up nothing but black coffee and staled bits of bun that people always seem to have around the office.

There’s a long pause while Charlie waits to see what Chris will say. He stares at the phone. Waiting to see if he’s receptive, if he shuts Charlie down. The churn in his stomach is back. Call it anxiety, madness, fear, excitement. Hope? 

**Hold up your hand in front of your face.**

_ok_

**_How many fingers are there?_ **

_5_

**Are you certain?**

_yeah_

_5_

**Smack yourself with it.**

_wtf_

_?_

**Don't make me repeat myself.**

Charlie sets his phone down, face up, as if Chris were able to see him through it, his sour disapproving glare trained on Charlie. Imagine such an impossible thing. He holds his right hand out at arm's length and scrutinizes it. He feels unbelievably silly as he tries, and then fails, to do as he's been told. His palm glances lightly off his cheek, fingers trailing over his five-day-old stubble and down his prickly neck. It makes him shiver, actually, in a nice way. Fuck, it would be good to be touched. 

He winces in anticipation and tries again. Barely a flicker of pain. Even if he was the kind of person who was used to doing the smacking, which he very well isn't, he doubts he'd have the guts to do it hard enough to hurt. Certainly not to himself. To anyone, come to think of it. 

He picks up the phone and types with shaking hands. 

_all right_

_ive done it_

**Good.**

**Now do it again.**

**Properly.**

He does it, too. Like Chris tells him to, even though why would it matter if he didn't? How would he even know? But he would, Charlie thinks as he punches in the letters, his right cheek smarting. He just _would_.

_okay_

_done_

**What does it feel like?**

_not much really_

Then after a moment’s tormented hesitation, but who cares, it’s late turned into way too fucking early and he’s too tired to even keep his eyes open, and maybe, very possibly, this whole conversation is simply Charlie falling asleep on the Central line, the bus, passing from wakefulness to sleep as the taxi speeds him home to Clapham, he writes — 

_better when you do it_

He stares at the phone before pressing send, gulps, and does it. His ears are roaring. A bomb could detonate out on the street and it would hardly register. Did he just invite Chris to come over so he can whack him round the face? What if he says no? Christ on a log, what if he says _yes_? 

It's nearly dawn on a school day; he's got projects, probably. He’ll be busy. He won't have time to spare for Charlie, will he? He fumbles for a cigarette and is two heavy drags deep when Chris writes back; his sternness coming across even through the text. 

**Go to bed, Charlie.**

**I'll be in my office tomorrow morning.**

Charlie reads the texts over. It sounds like an offer. Implied, not the full invitation, but. It's enough. He coughs, hard, and looks for a tissue to spit up into. 

**Goodnight.**

_night_

He types and then immediately deletes in turn, an x, then a smiley face, and then feeling like he has to say something writes, rather pointlessly, _bye_. 

~~~

_It’s open._ Chris's voice is muffled through the thick door. Charlie stands there with his hand on the knob, surprised that he's managed to make it this far without chickening out. 

The morning light is gray, cold. The room feels damp, as if maybe there's a leak in the roof seeping into the carpet and filling the space with moisture, a window left open overnight. 

_Hey_ Charlie says as he comes into the office. His eyelids are heavy, he realizes, now that he’s here. Christ, he probably looks a nightmare. Worse than usual. He looks at the floor, seeking the source of the damp but finds nothing. Only records flung about. _I can’t stay, sorry. I have to get to work. There's a pitch meeting._

 _That’s not a problem._ Chris heaves up out of his chair. _Shall we go for a walk?_

_Where?_ Charlie asks, remembering too late Chris's fondness for outdoor activity. _T_ _ _o_ work? _

Chris shrugs as he lifts his coat from the back of his chair with the first two fingers of his right hand and steps into it elegantly. 

_It’s miles_ he whines, sounding like a petulant child even to his own ears. This isn't the way to endear himself to Chris, nor is it the way to get what he wants. And he does want...it....that. Enough, he supposes, to suffer a the indignity of a little walking. 

_Come on_ he beckons cheerfully to the doorway now open before him. _I’ll buy you a doughnut._

Charlie suppresses the moody sigh that comes naturally to him. Good behaviour, he thinks, will count for something. It almost always has. 

He gets his doughnut, and the day's second coffee, and the fourth cigarette since he woke up from a restless, sandy-limbed night of shit sleep. Chris pays and Charlie lets him. It's easier than arguing about it. He extends his hand and offers Chris the pack. Chris shakes his head and rummages in his jacket pocket for his gum, then drums his fingers on the metal table. 

_Did it help?_

Charlie rolls the ash off on the table's edge. He watches the ember flare up into bright orange as the air hits it. _Little bit_ he admits to the glowing end. _There are nights —_ he starts, shakes his head. It's too pathetic. I'm losing my mind. I'm having a minor breakdown. Last night I thought there was another person in my flat. I swear there's a reason things keep going missing. I'm assigning political motives to spiders — _Annabel tells me I need to rest_. 

Chris looks down into his paper cup. His wide mouth turns down at the corners. Is he disappointed in how pedestrian Charlie sounds? How he hasn't been able to bear up under the pressure, as he himself has always managed to do? 

_Does she know what’s best for you?_ he asks at last. Charlie has long since finished his cigarette. 

He fiddles with his lighter. He could have another. He could put the pack away. He looks up, and Chris is watching him with intent. Snapping his gum, hands tucked into his coat pockets, thick thumbs on the outside. 

_I don’t know_ he replies. _I don’t even know what’s best for me._

A smile spreads across Chris’s face. He nods his chin at the road: time to walk. The rain will be along soon enough. 

Charlie stands up first, wobbles on his feet. Dizzy from nicotine and sleep deprivation, he stumbles into the table. 

_Careful_ Chris says, catching Charlie by the elbow. _You'll knock something over._

_Thanks_ Charlie says, dizzier than before. 

It’s drizzling by the time they make it to the Serpentine, where Charlie does catch his long-overdue bus. Chris stands with him in the shelter until it arrives, and though Charlie plays with the cigarette pack in his pocket that’s where it stays. 

_You wouldn’t_ Chris says as he’s walking away to get the bus. 

Charlie spins on his heel to catch his meaning. _Wouldn’t what?_

That grin again. Chris’s hair is getting wet from the rain. He wonders if it still feels the same. It’s been a long fucking time. 

_Know what’s best for you_ he says. _Besides, rest is overrated._

Charlie enters the bus with a pleasant shiver that follows him all the way to a seat — there’s one open next to an old lady in a sensible coat buttoned up to her throat who’s clutching her purse in her lap. She deflects his attempts at a smile with a dour look, purses her lips like she’s holding him personally accountable for the current, sorry state of Britain.

~~~

As the production limps to its close Annabel _says please give the post team some fucking breathing room already_ and boots him out the door. It’s a relief for one day but restlessness kicks in about four a.m. on the second night, when the wine bottle is empty and his eyes are heavy but his brain is screeching like a shopping trolley wheel in need of realignment. 

Charlie throws down the controller, picks up his phone. Who knows what’s best for him? He certainly doesn't. Fuck, does anyone? 

_you there?_

Minutes pass with aching slowness. He looks at the phone, at his paused _Tekken_ game, back to the phone, and grimaces. 

He goes to bed fucking miserable with the clock rounding the bend to six and tries to pull off with zero success, resigned to feeling like shit the next day. 

There’s no reply when he wakes up. He has another go at rubbing one out and this time it clicks. His fantasies are as vague, breast-focussed as ever, but Chris manages to pop up for a cameo while he's picturing some hot girl-on-girl action and from the corner sneeringly says _that’s ridiculous Charlie for one thing those fingernails are utterly impractical_ and Jesus, there had been two sets of bouncing tits in his mind’s eye and _that_ was the thing that’d set him off. 

He wipes his hand on the sheets with a faint resolve that he will use his day profitably. Get out of bed straightaway, smoke less than a pack, wash the damn sheets, clean out his inbox. Hell, he might even iron a shirt and read for a while. 

Charlie wraps himself in the duvet and strips the bed. There’s a forgotten load of laundry already in there, damp and moldering, meaning it’ll have to be run again. All he has is instant coffee but it’ll do for the time being. He plops down on the couch, turns on the television and opens up his laptop. He's a few hundred emails into a mass inbox clean-up when his phone chimes. 

**I’m working until eight tonight.**

**Come round after.**

~~~

It’s the nervous anticipation that comes with getting ready for a date, except that Charlie is only cleaning up so that, hopefully, he can get dirty again. Soon. Hopefully within a few moments of his arrival. There’s time to kill, some of which he spends in an increasingly terse email thread with Annabel and Al, and then when he’s remade the bed and tried, with minimal success, to make a head start on next week's column, he puts on his coat and takes himself out for the drink that, were this an actual date, would involve two people sat beside one another at the bar rather than one sad sack on his own, staring into a cocktail. 

Two people who would make small talk, say. Get to know one another better. 

But he knows Chris, more or less. Chris knows him, more. 

They have talked. Charlie has talked quite a lot. Chris mainly listened, save a probing question here and there, but once in a great while, he'd give Charlie something. 

All this time, it was that _something_ he'd been missing. He deeply hopes that Chris feels the same. Then again, if he hadn't, why would he bother offering the invitation? 

He leaves the bar and smokes a cigarette, and then has another one when he’s a block away. It's nearing nine o'clock. Whoever was there before him should have fucked off by now. 

Unless it is a social call, as opposed to a professional one. With Chris it was always hard to tell where the lines were. Besides, if he liked you, then he almost inevitably wanted to work with you. And if he wanted to _work_ with you....shit, anyone could be up there, he realizes as he drags his feet up the stairs. Arsher. Jesse. Riz. Paul. Keyvan. 

There’d been days that Charlie had felt downright wanton. Chris had said nice things, in this breathy, clipped voice that made him fucking _crazy_ in the head, and there were afternoons when he’d been withdrawn to the point that Charlie had left, head spinning with blue-balled confusion, and with nowhere particular to be had taken himself off to the nearest pub to stare at the wall. Days when he was cruel and Charlie had felt small, stupid, and days when he was that much worse but Charlie was fucking gagging for it. 

It makes his scalp prickle from the anticipation. By now he knows that it’s the not knowing what does it for him. 

Normal people would have gone for a drink, caught up, and then gone somewhere sensible, with a bed and a refrigerator. But when has Chris ever been normal? For that matter, when has Charlie? 

Chris is all alone, sat on the couch, one knee hiked up to his chest, resting a hand on it and looking over some looseleaf script pages. 

_Still working?_ Charlie observes as he pulls the door to, _thought you'd be done at eight?_

Chris finishes reading the page in front of him and sets it off to the side. _And here I thought you'd be here at eight. _

Charlie digs his fingers into his palms. He's the one here, asking for it — in a roundabout, pussyfooting way. He glances up, catches a glimpse of himself in the monitor's playback. Like being back in his flat, kind of. Of course they wouldn't need to go all the way there. Chris has the perfect set-up here, and it has the distinct advantage of not actually being BBC property, liable to be taken back at any moment. His face looks gray, the giant bags under his eyes visible even at this distance. His hair's in a terrible in-between state between shaved and floppy, unable to decide quite which direction it wants to grow in.

 _I don't think you'll need any help._ Chris scans the line of Charlie's body, and Charlie basks in the scrutiny. Everything, from his haircut down to his trainers, to his rapidly stiffening erection in between, probably has something wrong with it. Why does that feel absolutely right? 

Chris swallows. Charlie's own mouth is gaping dumbly, and they've not even done anything yet. _But should you need them, there's supplies in the desk._

Charlie removes his socks, and then his t-shirt, and then, because he knows Chris prefers it if he doesn’t look directly at the camera, his jeans and boxers while looking at the floor. 

_Top drawer?_ Charlie asks, walking over to the desk, trying to avoid the sight of his own face approaching the lens by turning his head to the side.

Chris clucks his tongue. _Bottom one_ he answers, and makes a little pleased noise when Charlie bends over. He swerves his face out of view and lets his mouth curl into a smile, fumbles around in the drawer like he's actually got a fucking lube preference. There’s other stuff in there. Charlie glances at the condoms and hopes, very much indeed, that they’d been left there intentionally. 

A towel has been thoughtfully laid out for him, and Charlie glances at the sofa before opting for the floor instead. Chris is watching him intently. The quiet is almost more than he can bear. 

It takes him a while to get comfortable, longer still to get going. Chris is holding back, he can tell, and he’s uncertain if it’s his responsibility to draw him out. The script hasn’t been flipped, precisely, but it’s almost as if Chris is allowing Charlie to make his own decisions. Give him enough rope, he supposes, to hang himself with. For someone who's spent the last year pulling silly faces for a camera he has an awful lot of hangups. He gulps in air, tries to shut his stupid brain down and focus on how his hands feel, the scratch of the towel under his arse. 

He can't quite see Chris to his satisfaction from any perspective. He's too far away for him to be in Charlie's line of vision, and besides, he knows Chris will like it better if he simply pretends he's not there. Fine. He can do that. 

But soon enough there's movement in the corner of his eye. Chris unfolds his long legs and adjusts his position on the sofa. Charlie might be imagining it, but he's pretty sure Chris just wiped a hand down the front of his cords. 

Chris slides from the couch onto the floor and sits next to Charlie. _Do you want some help_ he says and Charlie gasps and then he giggles because it’s a stupid fucking line like something from a premium cable channel but then there’s four hands on him instead of just his two and when Chris scratches his arm, pulls his nipple, bites his earlobe — it actually hurts because he’s not expecting it. 

Chris has all his clothes on except for his shoes and Charlie is cock-naked, skin flushing, which he can feel and see, in his peripheral vision, lube dripping onto the towel and being pushed back in with a thick, wet noise. 

_How do you want to come?_ Chris asks, and he’s so calm, how can he be this unaffected, when Charlie is over here whining high in his throat, as the two fingers he’s got inside himself are pressed in deeper, made to move with more urgency as Chris guides his hand. 

_You should fuck me_ Charlie manages to squeeze out. He sounds pathetic. He doesn't fucking care. _Please fuck me._

Chris pulls Charlie by his neck and turns his head so he's looking at him dead-on. _A_ r _ _e you sure?_ You seem to be managing well enough. _

_I’m not_ he stammers out, his breath rapid and shallow, the veins in his neck fucking throbbing. _'S not enough_.

Then Chris has Charlie’s face gripped between his hands and is pressing his lips to Charlie’s own and he says _undo my belt_ and Charlie scrambles to obey. 

_You can take it out_ he says and touches Charlie's chin lightly. _Since you're being unusually forthright._ Charlie shivers. 

He goes onto all fours, his hands shaking on Chris’s zip, opening his flies. He knows better by now than to just lunge for it, but he licks his lips all the same. He blinks up at Chris, hoping for guidance, unlikely to get any. 

Chris tilts his head down to look at Charlie on his hands and knees below him, Charlie’s mirror image flinches in the monitor. 

_Go on then_ he says, and ruffles Charlie’s hair. _Get what you need._

Charlie leans into it, more grateful than graceful, shifting more weight onto his hands. His eyes screw shut, resisting the temptation to look over to his left and see how he looks on camera. Awful, probably. Sweaty-haired and red-faced.

After a few indulgent moments — Charlie's well out of practice and succeeds mainly in making Chris's dick a slobbery, dripping mess, he gently detaches Charlie and inclines his head in the direction of the desk. 

Charlie can’t spare the few seconds it would take for him to stand up so he crawls on hands and knees back to the drawer. He rifles past the plastic bags tagged with initials and dates until he locates the condoms. He brings two over, because, well, you never know. 

Chris rips open a packet with his teeth, rolls it on in one graceful motion, grabs him by the hips. His fingers slip a bit so he digs them into Charlie's soft middle, pulls him astride his lap. Charlie’s mouth falls open in a way that would be shameful if he’d had any shame left. Lucky for him, he doesn’t. Chris holds his dick by the base and Charlie wants it, wants it so badly he can almost fucking taste it in his mouth, and he exhales, shakily, rears up on trembling legs until it’s all right. It takes a long time to fit. Chris is breathing heavily too but he’s holding himself back. Charlie wants to make it good for him, wants to make it worth his while. He knows he must look pathetically grateful, and for whatever reason that turns him on even more. 

Charlie shifts his arms back so they’re behind his shoulders and slides his bare feet across the carpeted floor, chafing against the soles of his feet. Chris is gripping him tight enough to bruise as he sinks into place. 

He levels his head back out, forehead coming up from where he’d been leaning back and a blurry haze clouds his vision. 

_Been a while?_ Chris asks, one side of his mouth tugging back in a dirty grin and he’d have a comeback at the ready, should have done, might have if it hadn’t been ages since he’d been here last. Charlie’s only slightly worried that his nose will start bleeding from how deep Chris is already. 

Chris’s eyes are glassy, almost, and he’s looking at Charlie like he’s hung the fucking moon and it hits him, then, that they’ve been doing a version of _this_ off and on for fucking years now, since that first summer when Chris had extracted from Charlie’s head all his dirtiest thoughts like a deeply unprincipled psychologist, when they’d gone into shops together, the way Chris had talked him into hard, painful orgasms in a dozen inappropriate places and then brought him home — no, to his _office_ , he gnashes his teeth in frustration, because Chris lives south of the river, just up the road from his own flat but has never offered the invitation — back to this square little space to fuck: sprawled across the floor; on the sofa; and once, he remembers with a shiver, face-down, over the toilet.

Chris’s hair bounces as Charlie does. And still, _still_ he wants more. Fuck it. In for a penny — 

_You should hit me_ he says a little breathless from the motion, dropping his eyes down into his lap where their bodies meet. 

Chris says _you’re talking nonsense_ but his eyes glint. Charlie won’t give up that easily. 

_‘M not_ he manages to say before he gives out a little grunt. _Go on._ _I did it for you, you do it for me._

 _Shut up_ Chris clenches his teeth together. His hands relax enough for Charlie to push up onto the soles his feet and get more traction that way. 

_I think you want to_ he says as his palms sweat against the scratchy carpet. 

Chris grimaces _I said stop talking_ and Charlie says _you want to, though._ He gulps in a lungful of hot, stagnant air before he blurts out the rest. _Your dick twitched when I said it._

 _Shut the fuck up_ Chris is saying and his face is unreadable and Charlie keeps pushing and says _don’t tell me you’re scared_ and that makes Chris’s mouth go into a tight, narrow line and Charlie is suddenly bold for the first time in thirty-five trips round the sun and spits out _do it you fucking pussy_ and that seems to do the trick. 

It hurts, quite a fucking lot, actually, and makes his ears ring. But fuck. _Fuck_. 

_Do it again_ he says, his voice all creaky and thick. His arse is fucking burning; there’s a cramp in his right calf but he can’t stop moving, can’t stop trying to cram as much of Chris inside of him as possible. 

It hurts now and he knows, with all the certainty of hope, that it’s gonna hurt tomorrow. That he’ll be in the edit room and Al will say _sit down why don’t you you’re making me fucking mental_ and Charlie will make some excuse about nervous energy, leg cramps, but that won’t be the reason at fucking all, and he’ll carry that pain around with him all day like a gift. 

_You don’t mean it_ Chris chokes out and Charlie snaps _like hell I don’t_ and a lot of things make sense right about now but none of them matter at this particular moment. 

_Don’t hold back_ he says, and Chris kind of growls at him and Charlie’s eyes wrench closed with the impact and the feeling in his chest is pure happiness wrapped in pain and he finds that he does like it, quite a fucking lot indeed. 

It goes on and on. Until his face is hot and his arse is burning and he’s close, really close. 

Chris’s hands are all over him, and he's got his hands around Chris's neck now and he should be embarrassed about his flushing face, his jerky, desperate movements, but all he can think is how good it is, how good it feels to scratch this itch with ragged-torn nails until it fucking bleeds. 

_Fuck_ he says _fuck, so good_. 

Charlie thinks it might be down to him that Chris is simply letting Charlie degrade himself in the way that feels best to him and he gets Charlie’s face in one hand and a wrist in the other, pushing his cheeks together until his lips squish up and says _you should see yourself_ and now it’s Charlie’s turn to say _shut the fuck up, you fucking tosser._

The computer is too high up for Charlie to really see what’s being transmitted but it’s almost too overwhelming even knowing that it’s right there. He can hear the noises coming out of him, sure, and he can hear the way he’s saying Chris’s name and Chris says it right back to him like a mockingbird and Charlie wants to die of shame simply from hearing himself in stereo let alone the rest. 

But Chris isn’t only in his arse, in his ears, he’s inside Charlie’s head, and he’s slipped his thick thumb into Charlie’s greedy little mouth and says _take it all in_ and when Charlie moans around his mouthful he whispers _been waiting for that hadn’t you_ and he nods, teeth scraping against the pad of Chris’s thumb and then lets his lips close around it and suck as hard as he wants to. 

_This is what you’re good for, Charlie._ His hair tickles Charlie’s neck. His breath is warm and smells of peppermint gum. _This is what you are, who you are. It’s all you’ll ever be._

Charlie has never been in a fight, never had the lights punched out of him. He’s been on one roller coaster, with the girlfriend who couldn't believe he'd never been to Alton Towers, and when he'd turned green and vomited into some shrubbery immediately after their first ride she'd quickly understood why. Once had been enough, but Charlie still remembers how that single ride had felt, the way the cars had clicked as they ascended into the sky, and how his stomach seemed to have detached from his body as they plummeted over that first dizzying, terrifying drop.  
  
Chris removes his thumb. He hears a horrible, desperate sound work its way out of his throat which turns into _Chris Chris I’m gonna_ and Chris grabs the back of his head so he’s staring directly at him and says it back, stupid and threadbare and needy as hell and that is horrible, terrible, sends hot shame coursing all through him but to absolutely no one’s surprise it’s enough to ramp his arousal up a notch and for him to be so fucking close to his orgasm that he can almost smell his own come. 

_You’re gonna make me come_ he says and Chris replies with a dark chuckle that sends a tingle right into Charlie’s pelvis and he says _I sure fucking hope so_ and Charlie says _what about you then_ and Chris says _I want to watch you first_ and Charlie says _you’ll have to touch me_ and Chris gets his wrists in his hand again and in the voice that he could have used to command armies but instead has decided to use to crack jokes and infuriate politicians and inflame the chattering classes he says _work for it, Charlie, don’t fuck about_.

~~~

A bed would help his back. Charlie winces as he pulls on his jeans, does it again for each of his socks. Chris helps him into his trainers, and ties them for him, tight, with a double knot that will be difficult to pick out when he gets home. 

He walks Charlie down the stairs. They’re stood on the pavement. Charlie’s face still stings from where Chris has slapped him. He’s going to pay for a taxi that he can ill afford but he almost thinks it would be better to get the bus. He could stand up on the bus. 

_Don’t work too hard_ Charlie says because that’s a thing people say to one another the same as they say _it’s good to bump into you_ and _let’s have lunch_ and _I’ve been meaning to call_. 

_I can’t say the same to you_ Chris says, and lights Charlie’s fag. _Work hard._

 _Sure_ Charlie replies. _That won’t be a problem._

Chris’s eyes flick over him, warm and appraising. Charlie feels good. Better than good: he feels like he’s been cleaned up, like all his accumulated bullshit’s been swept away by a firehose, washed out in a soaking thunderstorm. 

_You working on anything?_

_At the moment? It’s all a bit murky still._

_Yeah_ Charlie nods, looks out into the street. _Yeah I get that._


End file.
